China launches data-sharing initiative for humanoid developers

By Mike Oitzman | October 29, 2024

China has launched a data-sharing initiative for its domestic humanoid companies to accelerate innovation. The project is being spearheaded by the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and various Chinese humanoid companies.

As humanoids mature, they will require vast amounts of training data to enable the intelligence to autonomously execute everyday tasks. Every humanoid developer has the same problem, how do you generate the training data for these systems? The Innovation Center recognizes this issue and is seeking to bring the Chinese robotics industry together to accelerate humanoid development.

Chinese humanoid guidelines released

The National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (NLJIC), China’s first public platform dedicated to humanoids, is also building a training ground for humanoid manufacturers to collect high-quality data and promote industry-wide standards. Xu Bin, general manager of the state-backed center, to Chinese media outlet Yicai Global that like autonomous vehicles, “humanoid robots require large volumes of high-quality data for development, and advanced models demand even stricter data standards.”

China has also already released two standards documents for humanoids:

• • Guidelines for the Classification and Application of Humanoid Robots
  • Guidelines for the Classification of Embodied Intelligence Smart Development Stages

At press time, The Robot Report was still attempting to locate a copy of these documents.

A team led by the NLJIC released China’s first industry standards for humanoids. These standards classify robots across four technical levels (L1 to L4) and five intelligence levels (G1 to G5), assessing capabilities such as perception, cognition, decision-making, and autonomy.

The NLJIC was established in May 2024 in Shanghai. The center also announced the humanoid Qinglong, its first full-sized general-purpose humanoid robot, at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). Qinglong is designed to be an open-source platform for advancing the field of humanoids globally.

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NLJIC aims to train 1,000 humanoids by 2027. Multiple Shanghai-based companies, including Fourier Intelligence and Kepler, are developing humanoids that will benefit from the data-sharing initiative. Fourier Intelligence launched the GR-2, its second-generation humanoid, in September 2024.

IEEE Humanoid Study Group

A similar initiative is happening under the mentorship of Aaron Prather, director of robotics & autonomous systems program at ASTM International. The IEEE Humanoid Study Group is a yearlong project aimed at evaluating all of the current robotic safety standards, determining which (if any) cover humanoids, and identifying the gaps for future SDOs to begin the process of creating new, applicable standards.

“China has clearly made humanoids a national priority,” Prather said. “This should be a wake-up call to other nations. It also justifies the work of IEEE Humanoid Study Group and its work to develop humanoid standards at the international level to help accelerate humanoid adoption everywhere and not just in a single country.”